LAS VEGAS—At its annual Vision user conference June 10, Symantec announced updates to its Veritas NetBackup platform that include data deduplication, continuous data protection and granular recovery capabilities for both Windows and VMware environments.

The moves put the company on a par with competitors such as EMC, IBM, Data Domain and Hitachi Data Systems, which have offered those capabilities in their products for months—and in some cases, for years.

Symantec's NetBackup and Backup Exec now include virtual machine support, Windows protection, OpenStorage and recovery capabilities. The backup software is aimed at all market segments, from small and midsize businesses to large enterprises, a company spokesperson said.

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NetBackup RealTime Protection 6.5 now offers continuous data protection by capturing all changes to application data in real time; integration with NetBackup to improve users' experience through application-consistent recoveries and immediate access to disk-based images; and an alternative to array-based snapshots by delivering space-efficient recovery images.

NetBackup 6.5 also automates the movement of real-time data to longer-term storage media—including disks or tape.

"Our goal is to continue to integrate between NetBackup and Backup Exec, along with other Symantec products, to provide ease of use for our customers and to better meet their data protection needs," said Deepak Mohan, senior vice president of Symantec's Data Protection Group.

The updated NetBackup platform uses an open-standards architecture to deliver global deduplication and block-level continuous data protection, Mohan said. This software-based approach provides an alternative to appliance-based and array-based solutions because it allows customers to use their existing commodity servers and storage hardware as one collective grid, he said.

Symantec also has added Granular Recovery Technology, which it first introduced in Backup Exec, to its NetBackup platform. This allows for recovery of an entire system or individual files, e-mails, documents and virtual machines from single-pass image backups of Microsoft Windows, Exchange and SharePoint and VMware servers.

"IT organizations continue to see a significant growth in data year-over-year and need solutions that enable them to efficiently scale their data protection along with their business," said Lauren Whitehouse, a storage analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group. "Symantec continues to prove itself as a leader by delivering innovative products, allowing organizations to successfully back up and quickly."

Symantec offers a five-system NetBackup starter pack at $3,995. NetBackup 6.5.2 is available now; NetBackup 6.5.3 will be available in summer 2008. NetBackup RealTime Protection 6.5 is scheduled for release in fall.